Former
President Richard Nixon, in a 1991 letter to a British politician and
author, denied interfering with the 1968 Paris peace talks seeking an
end to the Vietnam War.

"Once
you win an election you will find any number of people who will
insist that they played a decisive role in the victory," Nixon
wrote Jonathan Aitken on May 29, 1991. "In the case of Anna
Chennault, she along with any number of others, used to bend John
Mitchell's ear as to what was going on in Vietnam and what our
position should be. Mitchell would puff his pipe, listen respectively
[sic], and pass on information only when he thought it might involve
important facts which I did not have from other sources.
Incidentally, to his great credit, he very seldom bothered me with
this massive information and information which came to his
attention."

The
letter from Nixon was recently made available by the Nixon
presidential library and is a rare comment by Nixon about the
so-called Chennault affair in which Chinese-American political
activist Anna Chennault acted as a conduit for information between
Nixon's presidential campaign and the South Vietnamese government.
Nixon did not mention Chennault at all in his 1978 memoirs.

Mitchell,
Nixon's former law partner, was his campaign manager in 1968 and 1972
and attorney general during Nixon's first term as president.

The
Nixon campaign, Nixon told Aitken, did not need to tell South
Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu that going along with any peace
deal in 1968 was a bad idea for South Vietnam. Thieu knew that
already, Nixon wrote.

"Coming
to the substance of the Chennault canard," Nixon wrote, "I
did not and I am confident Mitchell did not ever considered [sic]
using Chennault as a channel to get to Thieu. The important point to
remember is that Thieu didn't need to hear what Chennault claims she
told him. Thieu knew that I was hardline and that I was very
skeptical of North Vietnamese intentions and had opposed previous
bombing halts."

The
role of the Nixon campaign in the 1968 Paris talks has attracted more
attention in recent weeks because of a letter signed by 47 Republican
senators to the leader of Iran warning that any deal on that nation's
nuclear program could be overturned by the next president. Opponents
of the senators have called the letter a violation of the Logan Act,
a 1799 law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating with a
foreign power in a dispute with the United States. Nixon's role in
1968 is a much more apparent violation of the Logan Act than the
senators' letter, which was published publicly.

Nixon's
role, meanwhile, was done surreptitiously and only discovered through
National Security Agency taps on the communications of South
Vietnam's ambassador to the United States back to Saigon. Despite his
denial to Aitken, there is plenty of evidence tying
Nixon to the Chennault Affair.

Throughout
much of 1968, then-President Lyndon Johnson had some success at the
talks in Paris aimed at ending the Vietnam War. The North Vietnamese
and the Soviet Union, their main ally, wanted
the United States to stop the
devastating bombing of North Vietnam that had started in 1965.
Johnson wanted South Vietnam to be admitted as a full member of the
talks, something the North Vietnamese had refused.

The
Soviets told Johnson that ending the bombing would invigorate the
chances of the Democratic Party to keep control of the White House in
the 1968 election and stop Nixon, whom the Soviets considered a
dangerous extremist. Dovish members of the Johnson administration
also believed the bombing halt would help them politically.

Johnson
agreed to stop the bombing if the North Vietnamese met three
conditions — that the North Vietnamese respect the demilitarized
zone separating the two countries, allow the South Vietnamese to join
the Paris talks, and stop the artillery barrages on southern cities.
They did. Johnson stopped the bombing.

Nixon
had known since Oct. 7, 1968, that Johnson was looking for a way to
stop the bombing, because Johnson told him in a telephone
call that day.
"I think everybody is pushing for a bombing pause," Johnson
said. "I think you are. I think I am. I think everybody is."
"But for the right deal," Nixon said.

Johnson
spelled out the conditions he needed for the bombing halt but added
the caveat that it would be meaningless if the South Vietnamese did
not participate. He also told Nixon that if the North Vietnamese
violated the conditions for the halt, "we would have to
respond." "Yes," Nixon said. "Well, that makes
sense. We wish you well."

Nixon
knew the bombing halt was a reality, that it would help the Democrats
and possibly cost him the election. Despite his denial to Aitken, a
Tory member of the British Parliament, Nixon would frequently worry
about any disclosure of interference in the Paris talks, often, as he
did with Aitken, justifying it by saying the Soviets were trying to
skew the course of the U.S. elections.

In
the end, Nixon would become a willing negotiator with the Soviets,
reaching comprehensive deals on nuclear arms control and achieving a
reduced level of tensions on many issues. Henry Kissinger, Nixon's
national security adviser, would win a Nobel Peace Prize for reaching
a secret peace deal with North Vietnam that was signed in 1973. And
that peace deal was also one that was resisted vigorously by Thieu,
who worried that it would mean the end of his government.

South Vietnam
fell to the communists in April 1975. Thieu fled, first to Taiwan,
then to London and finally moved to Foxborough, Mass. He died in
2001.